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tinyE: Your guns can pivot which means you can be facing/moving one way and shooting another. Obviously what that means is that you need separate inputs (there is a dirty joke somewhere in there) for shooting and flying. The way I do it is I use my left hand and keyboard for steering (left right up down) the ship and my mouse for aiming my guns.
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DreadMoth: I think you might be thinking of another game, or a mod - FreeSpace and FreeSpace 2 have fixed-mount, forward-facing guns and your ship always faces the direction you're moving (unless you're using reverse thrust or have been pushed by a collision or blast). There is a free-look button (default is Numpad 0) which allows you to look in a different direction, but your guns still point forward (in free-look mode there's a red spot indicating where your ship is facing).

Mouse controls the direction your ship faces (assuming you have mouse control enabled in the options - sometimes it defaults to "off" for some reason) and thus where you're aiming (crosshair in the middle of the HUD).
You may have been thinking of the absolutely brilliant (and sadly now long-neglected) space combat game game Terminus. Among its many unique features (like dual-joystick support and a B5-esque plot/aesthetic) it had what was billed as "True Newtonian Physics", where the orientation of your ship and guns was independent of your direction of flight.
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megarock58: I tried playing the game with a mouse, you can fire your weapons but you can't move.
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Zyre: So you mean that I can fire my weapon with the mouse button but can't turn around? Aka Battlefield 3 Jet with mouse?
You can turn around with the mouse (I answered you in the Freespace forums too). A lot of people use the mouse for smaller turns and the keyboard for larger turns (avoids a lot of swiping of the mouse). Those who employ the system like it and say it works quite well (better for them than with a joystick). I prefer the joystick myself.

Here's the getting started page for the Freespace Open Engine on hard-light (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Getting_started). They link to instructions on how to setup FSO.
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Zyre: Sweet! ill purchase FS2 when I get back from my work :). Before I go, I saw somewhere that you can get a mod for FS2 that imports FS1? He said that you don't need to buy FS1 then.

Also, does FS2 support 1080p resolution?
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DreadMoth: This might be helpful :)

FS2 doesn't support 1080p out of the box, if I remember correctly. The FreeSpace 2 Source Code Project, however, supports that resolution and many others, also adding improved models and effects.

There is a way to play the original FreeSpace campaign in the SCP... don't remember if you have to buy FreeSpace for it to work or not. I think there might be instructions for it in the SCP installer/launcher.
(been a while since I last installed the FS2 SCP)
You don't technically *need* to the FS1 game to get FSport working in FSO, but one probably *should* :) - since in the FSport mod they do reuse assets from FS1 that don't come with FS2 the latter which you do have to buy for FSO to work (like voice, cutscenes, etc ...). In fact I found having the original cutscenes for FS1 bought from GOG helpful as there was a problem with the FSport cutscene encodings for some of the videos (note this was a problem only for the Mac).
Post edited July 25, 2013 by crazy_dave
http://www.gog.com/forum/freespace_series#1374782665
Here's what I found when playing Wing Commander 3: Armada. It's an Total Conversion using FRED, the Freespace 2 game editor. I could not hit the broad side of a barn with the mouse.

Get a joystick.

An affordable Logitech Extreme 3D Pro will serve you well. The high hat switch allows for a 360 view. Because when a Shivan bomber is behind you, you do not want to lose sight of it. Particularly because they travel in packs.